Call it embattled women vs. Gov. Sam Brownback.
The gals won. Round one, at least.
The case before U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten concerned the Dodge City Family Planning Clinic and the governor’s decision to defund all of the family planning clinics in Kansas because they advocate abortion rights.
This is an ideological thing, understand. The Dodge City clinic doesn’t do abortions. The only family planning clinic in Kansas that does is in Overland Park. We’re talking about medical information vs. religious dogma. Because some family planning clinics in Kansas and the rest of the nation do provide abortions to low-income women, and all of the clinics provide information about abortion, therefore all family planning clinics are works of the devil and should be shut down by any means required, regardless of the benefits of the other services they provide.
That is the ideological imperative that drove this administration to take the money the federal government sent to Kansas to fund its family planning clinics and give it to public health clinics and hospitals instead.
Tuesday afternoon, Judge Marten ruled that the federal government takes precedence over state governments. When Kansas took the money the feds sent to fund family planning clinics and gave it to public health clinics and hospitals instead, it was altering a federal decision. Judge Marten ruled Kansas can’t do that.
Without the money, the Dodge City Family Planning Clinic would have had to close. It had operated for 35 years with money from Congress. It had no other source of support. Again, not one abortion was performed within its doors.
In its explanation to the court, the clinic said closing down would leave 650 mostly low-income clients without access to reproductive health care services. About 200 of those women have incomes low enough to qualify for free care and another third pay only 50 percent.
Those are the powerless women the Brownback administration was willing to harm — in some cases, severely — in order to earn brownie points with the anti-abortion cabal. Where’s the compassion? Where’s the human concern?
Family planning services funded by the federal government have been provided throughout Kansas for the past 35 years. Mobile units routinely came to Iola in the late 1970s to serve women here.
Most of those who use the service come for contraceptives of one kind or another, for Pap tests and for tests and medicines for sexually transmitted diseases. Those who use contraceptives don’t need abortions; curing VD slows its spread.
THIS CASE is still before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Marten had ruled in August that Kansas must continue to fund all of the Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas. The state appealed that decision. It will be interesting to see how much money Kansas will spend in an effort to overturn Marten’s decision and earn the power to take away access to reproductive health care from the low-income women of Kansas.
A victory for the governor might earn Kansas still another first among the 50 states.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
